{"id":6638,"date":"2025-06-07T10:55:27","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T15:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6638"},"modified":"2025-06-07T10:58:04","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T15:58:04","slug":"new-yorker-celebrates-ted-williams-and-john-updike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2025\/06\/07\/new-yorker-celebrates-ted-williams-and-john-updike\/","title":{"rendered":"‘New Yorker’ celebrates Ted Williams (and John Updike)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"As part of a grand centennial year celebration, an episode of\u00a0The New Yorker Radio Hour\u00a0<\/em>featured “Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game,”<\/a> a remembrance that “naturally gravitated to a story about baseball with a title only comprehensible to baseball aficionados: \u201cHub Fans Bid Kid Adieu<\/a>.\u201d The essay was by no less a writer than the author John Updike, and the \u201cKid\u201d of the title was Ted Williams, the Hall of Fame hitter who spent nineteen years on the Boston Red Sox. By happenstance, Updike joined the crowd at Fenway Park for Williams\u2019s last game before his retirement, in 1960. Thomas, looking at subtle word changes that Updike made as he was working on the piece, reflects on the writer\u2019s craft and the ballplayer\u2019s. ‘Marginal differences really matter,’ she says. ‘And it\u2019s those marginal differences that are the difference between a pop-up, a long fly, and a home run. Updike really understood that, and so did Williams.’<\/p>\n

Excerpts from ‘Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,’ by John Updike, were read by Brian Morabito.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of a grand centennial year celebration, an episode of\u00a0The New Yorker Radio Hour\u00a0featured “Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game,” a remembrance that “naturally gravitated to a story about baseball with a title only comprehensible to baseball … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,70,35,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-updike-in-context","category-updike-in-pop-culture","category-updike-quoted","category-updikes-life-times"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6638"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6640,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6638\/revisions\/6640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}